How the winter festival trend can benefit you as an artist
In the music industry, festival season has always revolved around the summer months. As summer begins, the media becomes bombarded with festival-mania and the focus immediately shifts onto the leading festivals worldwide like Tomorrowland, EDC, and Ultra. Around the world, there are a consistently growing number of festivals that take place every single summer, leaving artists, particularly DJs, with plenty of opportunities to be booked anywhere in the world. With the summer market now completely saturated, some of the world’s largest festival brands have now started branching out to offer winter events alongside their core summer offering. But what does this mean for artists and their touring schedules?
As one of the world’s leading festival brands, Tomorrowland is one of the most respected trendsetters in the festival scene globally. When Tomorrowland implements a new strategy, people notice. Whenever Tomorrowland improves in some way, other festivals often strive to replicate this success by learning from the brand. This year, Tomorrowland announced its first ever winter festival, set to take place in the French Alps in March 2019. The announcement came as a complete surprise for both festival-goers and competitors, as the festival had never before expressed an intention to offer a winter edition. Combining the festival with a skiing holiday, Tomorrowland Winter offers a number of package options, including either lodging or travel. The 2019 event is set to play host to 30,000 attendees. While that number is nowhere near as high as the volume of attendees that head to the summer edition of the festival in Belgium, Tomorrowland, no doubt, have plans to rapidly increase this number over the coming years as the logistics of the event fall into place. It is likely that the first edition of the event will test the logistics in place and that next year’s edition will see a much higher number of visitors attending from an even broader range of countries worldwide.
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Though very little has been revealed about the festival itself, festival-goers’ trust in the Tomorrowland brand has meant that tickets have sold extremely quickly. This level of success for the ticket sale of the first-ever winter edition once again demonstrates the Tomorrowland brand’s continued level of dominance worldwide. It is rare that a festival brand commands so much support that attendees will purchase tickets for an event that they know very little about ahead of its very first edition. From an artists perspective, the festival provides massive opportunities for artists who perform to get their brand out there, and the expansion of the event means that even more artists will be able to benefit from the festival’s viral nature. Tomorrowland Winter will undoubtedly give even more upcoming artists the chance to shine, whether performing at The Gathering (the festival’s pre-party) or during an opening slot at the main event. The event may even offer increased opportunity for local French artists to shine and may boost the local scene for musicians.
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Tomorrowland is not the only major festival that is expanding to offer a winter option this year. German festival World Club Dome is also set to host its first ever winter edition this November. The summer edition of the event has grown to mammoth size over the years, offering a number of stages while always delivering an all-star lineup packed with leading names. Despite being its first ever winter edition, the festival in November will include over 100 artists across 20 floors and 3 days, a staggering feat for such a new concept. Although World Club Dome is yet to achieve widespread exposure at the same level as Tomorrowland, the festival is growing year after year and offers artists the opportunity to massively increase their dominance in Europe. Attendees travel from all over the world to attend the summer edition, making appearing at the winter edition all the more lucrative for artists. Unlike Tomorrowland, World Club Dome is taking a risk and diving straight into the Winter festival market in full force. Only time will tell if this event will prove as popular as their annual Summer edition.
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Although there are festival brands that have been hosting winter events for a number of years like Snowbombing, the expansion of leading summer festival brands into the winter season suggests that we are about to see huge growth in the winter festival market. With the summer calendar becoming more stacked with each passing year, festivals face a constant struggle to compete with other events occurring during the same weekend around the world. With competition becoming increasingly fierce, it comes as no surprise that festivals are looking to branch into the winter market in order to increase the value of their brand. The growth in the value of the festival market is seeing more events being created than ever before. But what do artists stand to gain from this shift?
Firstly, expansion into the winter season will generally offer many more opportunities for artists to be booked. Regardless of the stage you are at in your career, as the number of festivals on offer continues to grow each year, there are more and more opportunities for you to be booked to perform, whether as a mainstage headliner or as a smaller stage opener. Competition is rife between artists with those at the top often dominating the major festivals, making competing with these artists extremely difficult for those who are not yet established worldwide. The more festivals that take place, the more spaces there are for artists to perform, giving every artist more chance to be booked. In short, if David Guetta is booked to headline Tomorrowland, a festival occurring at the same time on a different continent will be looking to give another artist the chance to headline. The more spots there are available for artists, the more opportunities there are for those looking to advance.
By performing at festivals across the seasons, you will have more content to fill your calendar and have much less difficulty staying relevant year-round. On social media, videos of live performances often have the greatest potential for going viral. Videos of performances during the winter season are much less common and therefore have a much better chance of being interesting for your audience. Fans get tired of watching videos of the same summer festivals over and over, performing at a winter festival gives you the chance to publish content that really stands out as unique. Increased interest results in increased views, increased views results in increased brand exposure. Forming campaigns is difficult without video footage, and offering brand new video footage all year round is a great way to boost engagement on your promotional channels. In the current climate, electronic music is much more popular during the summer months. This shift towards winter festivals will undoubtedly enable this to change and will give electronic music increased popularity year-round, resulting positively for musicians and fans alike.
Ultimately, an increase of festivals on offer throughout the year adds to the value of the industry. The more money generated by events, the more value the industry has as a whole. As the value continues to increase, it offers an increase in revenue opportunities for artists and brands. While the industry continues to grow, it becomes more and more lucrative for artists. The expansion into the winter season illustrates that the support for electronic music continues to grow each year and will likely continue to grow into the future. While many doubted that the genre would remain dominant in the long run, doubters have been proven wrong as the electronic music scene is now more valuable than ever. As the number of events on offer continues to increase, it illustrates that the industry itself is in a solid position to continue being profitable for years to come. The more profitable the industry appears, the more likely it is for investors to pour more money into projects and schemes. The more faith leading brands have in the industry itself, the more it will continue to grow in the long run, generating more opportunities for artists and brands alike. All of these factors have a hugely positive impact on the longevity of the industry as a whole, resulting positively for fans, artists and brands alike.
With so many leading brands beginning to branch out into the winter season, this can only result positively for artists across the industry. An increase in opportunities to perform will allow more artists to grow and expand their reach. Often, all it takes is a performance at a festival like Tomorrowland to transform an artists’ career and increase their legitimacy globally. As leading brands continue to expand, these opportunities will continue to be more readily available for those looking to reach the top. As the festival calendar continues to fill up, there are even more opportunities for content-creation, campaigns and reach. Taking advantage of this trend is now easier than ever and will result in even more chances for you to reach the top. Ultimately, the expansion of the festival calendar can only result positively for artists and brands alike.